What is General Linguistics?’ The first full professor of General Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, Anton Reichling (1898-1986), asked this question in 1947 in the title of his inaugural lecture. Reichling presented his audience with a bird’s-eye view of eight centuries of answers to his question, which he all regarded as wrong, mainly because of the attempt to find the ‘generality’ of general linguistics in the wrong place: either in aprioristic ideas on ‘general grammar’ (the earlier answers) or in reductionist appeals to non-linguistic principles (the later answers). And yet, according to Reichling, one man had already been on the right track, that of ‘autonomous generality’, years ago. This man was Georg von der Gabelentz (1840-1893), and his answer can be found in his book Die Sprachwissenschaft, Ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse, first published in 1891. Reichling quoted a long passage from this book, in which Gabelentz envisages a new programme for language typology and which begins as follows:1 (i) Every language is a system, of which all parts organically relate to and cooperate with each other. One has to suppose that none of these parts may be lacking, or diff erent, without the whole being changed. Reichling concluded that Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of modern general linguistics, had an almost visionary predecessor. Reichling’s comments form a good starting point for the subject I want to explore, the rise of general linguistics, with a focus on Gabelentz. They are linked to the following facts and issues, all of which are relevant to this theme:  a) A European university established its fi rst chair in General Linguistics as late as 1947. b) Nevertheless, early varieties of general linguistics existed at least eight centuries before that. c) Th e ‘generality’ of general linguistics has been conceived in very diff erent manners. d) Saussure is regarded as the founder of modern general linguistics. e) Gabelentz anticipated at least some of Saussure’s ideas. I begin by providing a brief elaboration of (a)-(d), which will involve a more precise demarcation of ‘general linguistics’ and an overview of the development of general linguistics thus defined. Then I turn to Gabelentz’s role in this process. Basic data on Gabelentz are presented in a separate section. The next two sections focus on Gabelentz’s modernity. The anticipation of Saussure mentioned in (e) above will be discussed, together with some other modern aspects of Gabelentz’s work. The next section is entirely devoted to one very prominent aspect of Gabelentz’s modernity: his programme for language typology. In the last part of the article, I will put a different face on this programme. Despite its advanced aspects, Gabelentz’s work fell into oblivion rather early. Reichling’s remark on its ‘visionary’ character does not stand entirely alone, but it is outweighed by opinions on its outdatedness and by a general neglect.2 I will argue that the main source of this neglect can, rather paradoxically, be found in the very element of Gabelentz’s general linguistics programme that reveals his most advanced ideas: the typology programme. The last section summarizes the conclusions reached throughout the paper. General Linguistics: What, when, where? Disregarding, in this article, the above- mentioned long and largely philosophical tradition of scholarly involvement in general aspects of language (actually from Antiquity onwards),3 I will focus on the nineteenth-century development of general linguistics as a more or less well-defined empirically-oriented field of study. A plausible demarcation of general linguistics in this sense is suggested by history itself. From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, a new and successful linguistic approach was developed and introduced at universities, at first in Germany: historical-comparative linguistics. One of the central aims of this

Summarized by © lakhasly.com approach was a general descriptive coverage of and comparison between languages in their various stages of development, through a uniform and emphatically  empirical-scientific method. In this context, the term ‘general linguistics’ (in German Allgemeine Sprachkunde or Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) was introduced, indicating the study of general aspects of languages, which was distinguished from the study of particular languages. The very first linguistics professor, Franz Bopp (1791-1867), was appointed in 1821 to teach the subjects of Orientalische Literatur und allgemeine Sprachkunde at the University of Berlin.4 During the last part of the nineteenth century, the area of linguistics became broader and more diversified. Besides the emphatically diachronic historicalcomparative approach, other, synchronic, approaches underwent new impulses. For example, significant innovations were made in methods for the classification of languages. This development was closely related to another one: the enormous growth of empirical knowledge regarding large numbers of languages. Apart from the Indo-European languages, which used to be the main object of historical- comparative research, there was a new focus on other language families. The work of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was crucial for these innovations. New sub-disciplines were developed, such as phonetics, language psychology and dialectology. Also methodologically, there was a broadening and diversification of approaches. The natural sciences were no longer the only model to follow; there was also a rapprochement with, for example, biology and psychology (all of course in their nineteenth- century shape). For general linguistics as a discipline, this diversification was of crucial importance. It started as the science of the general principles of historical-comparative linguistics, firmly interwoven with historical-comparative linguistics itself. So the term ‘general linguistics’ was almost superfluous and was not often used. It was exceptional for a chair, as in Bopp’s case, to bear this name explicitly. Due to the growing diversity of language studies (which also implied a growing variation in specialization among linguists), general linguistics became a much more encyclopaedic and independent umbrella discipline. Techmer’s Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (1884-1891) was the first journal explicitly devoted to this area. Related to this increased prominence, the importance of general linguistics as a separate subject in university curricula was growing. During the first decades of the twentieth century general linguistics became an obligatory part of language programmes at European universities, with the francophone world rather than Germany taking the lead, mainly due to Saussure’s forceful and comprehensive conception of general linguistics explained in his Cours de linguistique générale (1916)5. He defined a set of abstract basic concepts for all language research (e.g. linguistique synchronique/linguistique diachronique, langue/parole/langage) and promoted a view of languages as self-contained  systems in which all parts relate to each other – exactly the idea of Gabelentz’s presented in quotation (i) above.6 This new programme enhanced the idea of general linguistics as an autonomous discipline. The institutional corollary was the rise of independent general linguistics departments and the establishment of full general linguistics professorships at all language faculties, albeit in a sometimes slow and gradual process. In the Netherlands, for example, general linguistics was introduced as a subject for academic teaching only in 1921. Initially, courses in general linguistics were assigned as additional tasks to language professors of all categories. Special chairs in general linguistics, such as Reichling’s, were created at all Dutch faculties of letters during the 1940s and

Summarized by © lakhasly.com 1950s.7 An important milestone in this extended ‘making of a discipline’ process was the appearance of general linguistics textbooks. The first examples of this new category appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, mainly in Germany. They were written for university students and professional linguists. Gabelentz’s Die Sprachwissenschaft (1891, 19012) belongs to this first generation of textbooks,8 as do, for example, Paul’s Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (1880) and Delbrück’s Einleitung in das Sprachstudium (1880).9 Gabelentz and ‘Die Sprachwissenschaft’ Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz was originally a sinologist and polyglot researcher of many non-Indo-European languages. In this respect he was following in the footsteps of his father, Hans Conon von der Gabelentz (1807-1874), who, while pursuing a career as a professional politician, also investigated many exotic languages. Initially, Georg was also a dilettante linguist: he taught himself Dutch, Italian and Chinese during his gymnasium years. After studying law, administration and linguistics in Jena, he worked in the civil service of Saxony for fourteen years. During this period, he wrote a thesis at Dresden University on the translation of a Chinese philosophical text. From 1878 onwards, Gabelentz held professorships, first in Far Eastern Languages at the University of Leipzig, and from 1890 until his death (in 1893) in East Asiatic Languages and General Linguistics at the University of Berlin. From 1884 to 1889 he was co- editor of Techmer’s Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Die Sprachwissenschaft is the result of Gabelentz’s increasing involvement in general linguistics courses for students. Earlier, in 1881, Gabelentz had published his other magnum opus, Chinesische Grammatik (Grammar of Chinese). The fame of the latter book, which was reprinted several times until as late as 1960,  lasted much longer than the fame of Die Sprachwissenschaft, which was regarded as outdated rather soon after its publication.10 The opening sentence of Sütterlin’s review of the book’s 1901 reprint characterized the book as ‘a remnant from earlier times’.11 Sütterlin was not alone in his verdict. Ten years later, the famous American linguist Bloomfield spoke of a ‘lively, if not always fully modern book’. In contrast, he recommended Paul’s Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte as presenting ‘the principles and methods of modern linguistics’.12 These words were prophetic, because Gabelentz was soon forgotten, whereas Paul’s book retained its textbook status over some decades. Yet, Reichling was by far not the only one to emphasize Gabelentz’s modernity and anticipation of later ideas. For example, in Morpurgo Davies’s detailed overview of nineteenth-century linguistics, an ‘inescapable air of modernity’ is observed in Gabelentz’s book, in comparison to other textbooks.13 In the next sections we will see how it can be explained that Gabelentz evoked such contradictory judgements. Gabelentz as a pioneer of general linguistics Morpurgo Davies motivates her remark on the air of modernity present in Die Sprachwissenschaft in terms of the total ‘arrangement’ of the book: (ii) Gabelentz’s fi rst section ... started with generalities about language and a brief history of linguistics but then turned to a discussion of various approaches with which the linguist must be familiar: phonetics, psychology, logic. Th e other three sections of the book deal with einzelsprachliche Forschung (the analysis of individual languages), ‘genealogical-historical’ linguistics, and fi nally General Linguistics (allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft). Here the subjects discussed are the human capacity for language, the language of animals, etc., the analysis of discourse, the organization of morphological material, word order, intonation, grammatical categories, etc. – all this with reference to a number of non-Indo-European languages. In the

Summarized by © lakhasly.com arrangement there is an inescapable air of modernity ...14 Morpurgo Davies rightly observes that Gabelentz was innovative in many respects, and that the total design of the book reflects this. In the following subsection, I discuss this aspect of Gabelentz’s modernity in more detail. Other aspects are dealt with in two additional subsections.  General linguistics as a multiform science More than other late-nineteenth-century general linguistics textbooks, Die Sprachwissenschaft bears witness to the author’s intention, not only to present a broad body of linguistic knowledge, but also to offer students of linguistics a number of basic conceptual tools and methods for research. Due to this broad approach, the book’s underlying framework is very similar to the framework of recent introductions to general linguistics: a combination of ‘encyclopaedia of linguistics’ (overview of approaches and sub-disciplines), ‘foundations of linguistics’ (basic linguistic concepts) and ‘general linguistics’ in the narrower sense of ‘research that generalizes over all languages’. This combination reflects a stillexisting duality of general linguistics as an auxiliary discipline for all language investigators and general linguistics as a separate area of research. Gabelentz’s advanced approach is reflected in the arrangement of his book, as was observed by Morpurgo Davies in quotation (ii). After a general section on the scientific study of language, sections on the synchronic analysis of a single language and on historical linguistics provide the basic knowledge and methods for research in these respective areas. The final section deals with general linguistic phenomena (e.g. word order, intonation) and especially with the language typology programme.15 In order to elaborate such a broad design, Gabelentz had to acquire new knowledge. Whereas earlier textbooks mainly reflect the specializations of their authors, Gabelentz explicitly mentions his efforts to extend his original, mainly polyglot expertise into less exotic areas such as historical linguistics (traditionally focused on Indo-European languages) and his native tongue, the latter because he felt the necessity to illustrate his theoretical expositions for his German audience through maximally clear and accessible examples.16 With respect to the book’s general design, Gabelentz’s first section Allgemeiner Theil (General Part) is remarkable for various reasons. Firstly, its overview of the history of linguistics is by no means confined to Western scholarship as is usual in such overviews – the fruit of Gabelentz’s wide knowledge of exotic languages and cultures.17 Secondly, the subsection Schulung des Sprachforschers (Education of the Language Researcher) heralds a new involvement in the didactic aim of general linguistics. It is divided into four parts, devoted to education in phonetics, psychology, logic and general linguistics itself respectively.18 It is unfortunate, from a present-day perspective, that there is an implicit restriction in this subsection to language research in the sense most familiar to Gabelentz: the empirical analysis of new and mainly orally available languages. What is being presented as auxiliary sciences is actually a range of auxiliary practical skills, useful for such  an enterprise. Phonetics is discussed as a training in listening, articulation and transcription; psychological training comes down to a general alertness to subtle semantic phenomena; logic is discussed as a skill in practical reasoning, and general linguistics training mainly consists of practical exercises in the acquisition of maximally different languages. It seems that Gabelentz considered these four areas irrelevant as theoretical disciplines. However, it would be self-contradictory to maintain this: the whole book is a theoretical introduction to general linguistics, thought to be relevant to all language students. An important issue in such a theoretical introduction is the position of linguistics among other sciences.

Summarized by © lakhasly.com Gabelentz does not fail to include in his first section a subsection devoted to this subject (Stellung der Sprachwissenschaft), which discusses theoretical connections of linguistics with anthropology, history, natural science, psychology, logic and metaphysics. But this discussion does not reveal any implications for the training of language students in these related disciplines.19 In sum, Gabelentz presented an advanced and broad conception of general linguistics, although the new educational involvement borne out by Gabelentz’s Schulung subsection remained confined to a limited area within the entire field of language research. Saussure and Gabelentz Gabelentz owes most of his ‘modernist’ reputation to his being a forerunner of Saussure. Reichling was far from the only observer to pinpoint similarities between these scholars. I will not go into the still unresolved controversy as to whether Saussure actually derived his ideas from Gabelentz.20 The similarities are striking, although one may be tempted to overemphasize them.21 The most important similarities concern the above-mentioned conception of languages as self-contained systems, the sharp distinction between synchrony and diachrony, the prominence of synchrony over diachrony, defended by Gabelentz as vehemently as by Saussure, and the conceptual distinction langue/ parole/langage, which is similar to Gabelentz’s distinction Einzelsprache/Rede/ Sprachvermögen). These are fundamental principles of general linguistics, but there are also equally fundamental principles on which Saussure and Gabelentz differ vastly. For example, Gabelentz’s above-mentioned advanced programme for language typology is absent from and even contradicts Saussure’s Cours, despite its startingpoint (presented in quotation (i)) in the very Saussurean idea of languages as self-contained systems. This programme, including its non- Saussurean aspects, will be elaborated on in the next two sections.  Other early insights There are other, more isolated elements in Die Sprachwissenschaft that have prompted the conclusion that Gabelentz was well ahead of his time. In his specialty, polyglot knowledge, he was unequalled. But also his achievements in what may be called ‘pragmatics-avant-la-lettre’, are remarkable. In this respect, his sole basis is his ingenuity in observing subtle phenomena of language use, mainly in his native language. For example, his analysis of sentences in terms of a ‘grammatical’ and a ‘psychological’ subject and predicate foreshadows the research area now called ‘information structure’. Also his semantic/pragmatic analysis of modal particles and interjections and his ideas on German word order anticipate insights developed further only in the second half of the twentieth century.22 Th e ‘hypology/typology’ programme Gabelentz’s ideas on language typology can be found in the last part of section 4 of Die Sprachwissenschaft: Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (General Linguistics). It is contained in its sixth chapter titled Die allgemeine Grammatik (General Grammar), which is preceded by chapters on general issues such as the human capacity for language, general linguistic phenomena (e.g. intonation, word order) and the evaluation of languages (Sprachwürderung). Chapter 7, on general aspects of the lexicon (Die allgemeine Wortschatzkunde), is the book’s penultimate one, only followed by a very brief concluding chapter. Additional details of the typology programme are presented in Gabelentz’s very last article, published posthumously in 1894.23 Publishers’ initial unfamiliarity with the term ‘typology’ (cf. note 1) becomes very apparent from an error in the title of the published article: Hypologie der Sprachen. Eine neue Aufgabe der Linguistik (Hypology of languages: A new task for linguistics). Due to his sudden death, Gabelentz was unable to correct the proofs. The central tenets of

Summarized by © lakhasly.com the programme are laid down in the passage from Die Sprachwissenschaft partially quoted by Reichling. Its first sentences were presented in quotation (i); the rest of the passage runs as follows: (iii) But it also seems that, in the physiognomy of languages, certain features are more distinctive than others. We must trace these features, and investigate which other features regularly co-occur with the former ones. I am thinking of morphological and syntactic particularities, and of preferences with respect to grammatical categories. I also feel that these phenomena interact with phonetic phenomena. Th e induction that I require may be  extremely diffi cult, and if and as far as it will succeed, sharp philosophical thought will be required to recognize, behind the regularities, the laws, the active forces. But how gainful it would be if we could straightforwardly say to a language: you have this characteristic, consequently, you have those further characteristics, and that general character! – if, like the bold botanists have tried to do, we could construct the lime tree from the lime leaf. If I were allowed to baptize an unborn child, I would choose the name typology. I observe here a task for General Linguistics, which can be fulfi lled already with the means now available. It will earn fruits that do not yield to those of historical linguistics in maturity and will be superior in scientifi c signifi cance. What was thus far said about spiritual relationship and similar features of non-related languages, will acquire a concrete form, and be presented in exact formulas; and subsequently, speculative thought should be added to these formulas, in order to interpret something observable as something necessary.24 This programme has been praised by later generations of linguists, who recognized in it the idea of ‘implicational universals’, which was only reintroduced in the 1940s: if a language has feature B, it must also have feature A. After the nineteenth- century decline of earlier types of universal grammar, which proved to be biased in favour of European grammatical categories, this idea opened a new way to language universals: powerful restrictive generalizations became available, not through claims that all languages share specific substantial features (which had proved unsuccessful), but through claims that some features imply other features. This approach allowed for a strong delimitation of possible combinations of properties and for a new way of classifying languages, apart from the familiar genetic classification. In the 1894 article, Gabelentz gives away a few more details regarding the ‘exact formulas’ that could present the type of generalizations he envisaged. Here the typological programme reappears in a more elaborated form, in which several stages are distinguished. The first stage aims at drawing up a complete inventory of features of as many languages as possible.25 The second stage is ‘purely mechanical’: a statistical analysis, resulting in exact correlations between features (example: A coincides with B in ¾ of all cases) and knowledge about features with a great predictive power. The result is that ‘from a dozen of well- known features, a hundred other features can be extrapolated.’ Gabelentz explicitly refers to the great palaeontologist George Cuvier (17691832). Cuvier applied a comparable programme, which enabled him to ‘build an entire animal from one bone’ (see also the comparison in the above quotation (iii) with the ‘bold botanist’ who constructs the lime tree from a leaf ).26  It is not surprising that later language typologists have recognized the progressive thrust of this programme. Nor is it surprising that typology in this form was welcomed by Reichling and others as a central research area of general linguistics, which it has remained until now. ‘Th e last gasp of Humboldtian tradition’ Given this very exact and remarkably advanced programme, it is hard to imagine that Gabelentz’s work was condemned as ‘outdated’. This

Summarized by © lakhasly.com criticism was entirely due to the third and final stage of the programme, not discussed thus far: in the words of quotation (iii), the stage in which the ‘active forces’ behind the regularities are recognized through philosophical thought, and in which ‘speculative thought should be added to these formulas, in order to interpret something observable as something necessary’. What are these ‘active forces’? Gabelentz’s general view, emanating from throughout Die Sprachwissenschaft, is that all languages have organic characteristics that embody the collective mentality of their speakers. This Sprachgeist (spirit of the language) is mainly manifest in overall structural characteristics, and directly reflects the language users’ Volksgeist (spirit of the people). Structural variation between languages and language types is thus causally connected to variation between mentalities and thought patterns. In Gabelentz’s words: ‘Every language embodies a world view, the world view of a nation’.27 In the third stage of the typology programme, the structural patterns discovered in the former stages are explained in terms of these national mentalities. In his ‘Hypology’ article, Gabelentz emphasizes that observation, induction and statistical procedures yield impressive results, but these results only consist of what is called correlations of features. Correlations become real relations when they are interpreted in terms of national mentalities of the language users. These mentalities cannot be observed directly: they are objects of speculation. The procedure necessarily appeals to what Gabelentz calls ‘the investigator’s subjectivity’, but he claims that this subjectivity is minimal, given the objectivity of the rest of the procedure. His conclusion is that, along these lines, the twentieth century will realize what the nineteenth century aspired to in vain: ‘a truly general grammar, entirely philosophical and yet entirely inductive’. This ‘philosophical’ aspect of Gabelentz’s programme is a direct continuation of a typical nineteenth-century (mainly German) tradition of linking languages to national mentalities. Wilhelm von Humboldt was the most important representative of this tradition. Main features of the tradition are its speculative character (there was a simple extrapolation from language features to thought  features) and its evaluative corollaries (for example the idea that ‘irregular’ languages embody muddled thought). Gabelentz’s huge chapter Sprachwürderung (almost 100 pages, one-fifth of the volume) contains many examples of this line of thought.28 This programme was soon declining after the turn of the century. The very idea of collective national mentalities was already severely criticized by Paul in his Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Humboldtian claims about language-thought relationships were rejected, for example by Saussure, as entirely unwarranted.29 Actually, the issue disappeared as a kernel subject of linguistics and returned later in a separate subdiscipline: linguistic anthropology.30 Sütterlin, the reviewer of Die Sprachwissenschaft, speaks of Gabelentz as the very last follower of Humboldt’s approach to General Linguistics.31 He claims that this approach died with Gabelentz. Ninety years later, Hutton, in the preface to his new edition of Die Sprachwissenschaft, used almost the same words, when he described Gabelentz as ‘the last gasp of Humboldtian tradition’.32 Hutton also mentions an additional negative aspect of Gabelentz’s programme, namely theoretical incoherence. His claim is that Gabelentz was a thoroughgoing Humboldtian and thus belonged to the humanistic tradition. Gabelentz rejected the mechanical world view implicit in the views of linguists such as Bopp and Paul. But, incoherently, he also wanted to include the natural science point of view. However, this incoherence is only apparent. It is an artefact of the current assumption of an unbridgeable gap between the nineteenth-century natural

Summarized by © lakhasly.com sciences and humanities. True, this distinction was widely accepted. For several nineteenth-century linguists, it caused a bipartition of their discipline, be it in rather different ways. For example, Schleicher distinguished Glottik, the natural science of sounds and words, from Philologie, which was classed among the humanities and covered syntax and stylistics.33 The criterion was (in)dependence on the free will. For Paul, the criterion was the ontological nature of the object of research: the study of sounds was regarded as a natural science (acoustics or physiology), the study of meaning was seen as belonging to the humanities, namely to psychology, which Paul considered to be the only ‘pure’ member of this category. But such examples do not imply that unitary enterprises that combine elements of both areas are incoherent. Recent investigations show that there are, on the contrary, many examples of a coherent ‘mixed’ research style. In this case, methodological aspects of both approaches are applied, but at different levels: on the one hand painstaking empirical observation and inductive generalization, on the other hand explanation in terms of non-mechanical ‘forces’. Especially the life sciences and history exhibit this style. Prominent examples are Cuvier  and Humboldt himself (especially in his historical work). The approach now labeled ‘enlightenment vitalism’, prominent in the nineteenth-century life sciences (physiology and paleontology), is a case in point. History largely followed this example. It appealed to historical forces, which were thought to be on a par with natural forces. At the same time, there was a strong orientation towards objective data. The historical writings of Humboldt himself are examples of this approach. Rather than create a ‘counter-science’ apart from the natural sciences (as he is often believed to have done), he tried to translate data-gathering principles of the natural sciences into history and linguistics. The historian Droysen even described Humboldt as ‘the Francis Bacon of historical science’.34 Gabelentz, who admired both Cuvier and Humboldt, followed this ‘mixed’ approach. His appeal to induction and statistics as the only method to attain regularities and, at the same time, his ideas on world views as forces behind them fit in with a general pattern that can be observed in other nineteenth-century disciplines as well.35 There can be no doubt that, despite all modern elements scattered throughout the book, it was Gabelentz’s continuation of the Humboldtian programme, especially in his typology project, that doomed the book to oblivion soon after its appearance. On the other hand, Gabelentz’s way of applying the program contains several germs of innovation. For example, two passages of the 1894 article hint at the requirement of empirical support for claims about national mentalities. The idea of pure ‘speculation’ is thus mitigated. Although Gabelentz does not elaborate the idea, he stresses the necessity of testing such claims against anthropological and historical data. Moreover, the Sprachwürderung chapter contains many critical remarks about language evaluation as practised by colleague-linguists.36 In the first place, as a polyglot lover of all language types, Gabelentz sharply criticized unsound and biased ways of dealing with exotic languages. A striking example of this bias is the double-standard evaluation of languages with respect to abstract nouns: in ‘civilized’ languages, a large number of abstract nouns is regarded as a signal of a capacity for abstract thought, in ‘primitive’ languages as a signal of vague and imprecise thought. Similarly, a small number is regarded as a signal of a capacity for subtle distinctions and as a signal of an incapacity for abstract thought, respectively. In the second place, Gabelentz’s sharp distinction between synchrony and diachrony kept him from resorting to unjustified appeals to etymology in extrapolations from words to

Summarized by © lakhasly.com concepts. For example, when a language applies the expression ‘seeing hunger, fear, etc.’, this does not imply anything, according to  Gabelentz, about the way in which the sensation of hunger or fear is conceptualized by its present speakers. In the third place, Gabelentz stressed that one should never consider isolated phenomena; the idea of languages as self-contained systems implies that a whole language should be taken into account. For example, absence of a case system for nouns and adjectives does not imply ‘formless thought’: the system may contain other means instead of cases to express the same content. In summary, despite Gabelentz’s acceptance of the almost obsolete idea of language evaluation, his modern linguistic insights are reflected in his execution of this programme. Conclusion The rise of general linguistics as an academic discipline was a multifarious process in which various aspects (content, textbooks, journals, chairs) did not always keep pace with each other. Gabelentz’s Die Sprachwissenschaft was a milestone in this process. In his book Gabelentz presented a broad overview of general linguistics as a basic introduction for all linguists and he gave an advanced typology programme a central position in general linguistics as a research area. In both respects, Gabelentz was ahead of his time. In addition, his theoretical insights anticipate ideas developed later by Saussure and others. However, due to the prominence of the Humboldtian programme, the book fell into oblivion rather soon after its appearance. Notes  My translation, as in all German citations that follow. Reichling’s lecture (Dutch title: ‘Wat is Algemene Taalwetenschap?’) was published in his Verzamelde studies over hedendaagse problemen der taalwetenschap (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, ),-. The term ‘typology’, which is very commonly used nowadays, was coined by Gabelentz in the following Sprachwissenschaft passage: ‘If I were allowed to baptize an unborn child, I would choose the name “typology””. Cf. Georg von der Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse (), reprint, with an introduction by E. Coseriu (Tübingen: Narr, ),  (first edition ).  For example, in Hans Arens, Die Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Freiburg etc.: Karl Alber, ) and Robert H. Robins, A Short History of Linguistics (London etc.: Longmans, ), Gabelentz is mentioned only once or twice and in a marginal way.  Medieval Grammatica Speculativa, the earliest example mentioned by Reichling, in many respects builds on ancient grammar. See e.g. Robins, A Short History, chapter .   See Van Hal’s contribution to this volume, ‘Linguistics ante litteram. Compiling and transmitting views on language diversity and relatedness before the nineteenth century’, for earlier ideas that anticipate historical- comparative linguistics. Bopp is discussed in Karstens’s contribution ‘Bopp the builder. Discipline formation as hybridization: the case of comparative linguistics’.  Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (), édition critique preparée par Tullio de Mauro (Paris: Payot, ).  Despite the term ‘organically’ in the Gabelentz quotation, he and Saussure both rejected, for different reasons, the idea of languages as organisms, which was widely adopted throughout the nineteenth century (cf. Karstens, ‘Bopp the Builder’). The new saussurean view, anticipated by Gabelentz, is more radically holistic than earlier organicism: the system is regarded as prior to its elements; hence the claim that any minor change affects the whole.  Cf. Jan Noordegraaf, ‘Reichling revisited: Algemene taalwetenschap in Nederland, ’, Voortgang  (), -.  These textbooks, however, did not appear totally out of the blue; they were preceded by some earlier mid-nineteenth-

Summarized by © lakhasly.com century works on general aspects of language, such as Heyse’s System der Sprachwissenschaft (). Differences and similarities between these earlier works and the more didactic and encyclopaedic textbook generation to which Die Sprachwissenschaft belongs are discussed in Anna Morpurgo Davies, Nineteenth-Century Linguistics, vol. IV of G. Lepschy (ed.) History of Linguistics (London etc.: Longman, ), - and -. Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, , pays explicit tribute to several predecessors of the earlier generation.  Hermann Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (Halle: Niemeyer, ); Berthold Delbrück, Einleitung in das Sprachstudium (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, ).  Actually, Die Sprachwissenschaft was reprinted as well, in  and in . However, these reprints were made from a mainly historiographic perspective, whereas the Chinese grammar was reprinted because of its value for present-day research of classical Chinese.  Ludwig Sütterlin, ‘Review of G. von der Gabelentz‚ “Die Sprachwissenschaft”’, Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie  (), -.  Leonard Bloomfi eld, An Introduction to the Study of Language (), New Edition with an Introduction by J. Kess (Amsterdam etc.: Benjamins, ). In the history of linguistics Bloomfi eld is regarded as the ‘father of American structuralism’, the counterpart of Saussure, the ‘father of European structuralism’. Also in standard historiographies such as Arens o.c., Paul’s book features much more prominently than Gabelentz’s.  Morpurgo Davies, Nineteenth-Century Linguistics, .  Morpurgo Davies, Nineteenth-Century Linguistics, .  The size of the four sections is unequal:  p.,  p.,  p. and  p., respectively.  With respect to historical linguistics, Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, iv, mentions his ‘uneasy feelings’ regarding scientific borrowing. With respect to his native language, however, he proudly believes that he can trust his own judgments as well as others’ judgments. Justifiably so, given his keen German observations in hitherto largely unexplored language areas (cf. . below).  Even to the present day, historical overviews of linguistics exhibit a heavy focus on the Western tradition. Exceptions are Esa Itkonen, Universal History of Linguistics: India, China, Arabia, Europe (Amsterdam etc.: Benjamins, ) and Rens Bod, De vergeten wetenschappen: De geschiedenis van de humaniora (Amsterdam: Prometheus, ). In the  latter book, which covers the whole area of the humanities, linguistics is only one of the disciplines dealt with.  Despite his serious involvement in the education issue, Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, , seems to be nostalgic about the – then still recent – past situation in which linguistics was not yet an academic discipline and scholars entered the linguistic field on the basis of being educated in, for example, medicine or law (examples of the latter: Humboldt, Grimm, Gabelentz Sr.). Gabelentz regards the avoidance of professional routine (zünftlerischer Schlendrian) as an advantage of the earlier situation.  Many recent introductions to general linguistics remain silent on this admittedly difficult question as well, for that matter.  See Jörn Albrecht, Europäischer Strukturalismus: ein forschungsgeschichtlicher Überblick (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, ) for a recent summary of this controversy. Saussure’s work builds on some ideas of other scholars as well, for example those of the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (-) and the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (-). These intellectual connections, especially the latter one, are much more well-known than the connection between Saussure and Gabelentz.  Morpurgo Davies rightly observes: ‘Georg von der Gabelentz has both gained and suffered from the attempts to connect

Summarized by © lakhasly.com him with Saussure. They have rescued him from the almost complete obscurity into which he had fallen, but at the same time have called attention to particular parts of his work rather than to others which are equally deserving’ (cf. Anna Morpurgo Davies, ‘Language Classification in the Nineteenth Century’, in: T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, . Historiography of Linguistics,  vols (The Hague etc.: Mouton, ), -).  Cf. Els Elffers, The Historiography of Grammatical Concepts: Nineteenth and TwentiethCentury Changes in the Subject-Predicate Conception and the Problem of their Historical Reconstruction (Amsterdam etc.: Rodopi, ) for details about Gabelentz’s ‘double’ subject-predicate conception. Gabelentz’s other novel semantic/pragmatic ideas are discussed in Els Elffers, ‘Georg von der Gabelentz and the rise of General Linguistics’, in: L. van Driel & T. Janssen (eds.) Ontheven aan de tijd: Linguïstisch-historische studies voor Jan Noordegraaf (Amsterdam/Münster: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU/Nodus Publikationen, ), -.  Georg von der Gabelentz, ‘Hypologie der Sprachen. Eine neue Aufgabe der Linguistik’, Indogermanische Forschungen  (), -.  Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, .  Gabelentz acknowledges that such an inventory requires an organized cooperation between linguists, who must apply one and the same questionnaire. He is not too pessimistic about this project, although he realizes that ‘this programme requires more selfless obedience than can be expected of the majority of scholars’.  In Frans Plank’s article ‘Hypology, Typology: The Gabelentz Puzzle’, Folia Linguistica  (), - , arguments can be found to the extent that Gabelentz’s knowledge of Cuvier’s work was not direct but derived from his colleague and co-editor Friedrich Techmer (-), who had a background in natural sciences. Plank also shows that some typological ideas of Gabelentz were not entirely new. However, Gabelentz was the first to elaborate them into a concrete step-by-step professional programme, ready to be carried out. ‘But death intervened before the search could begin in real earnest’, Plank, ‘Hypology, Typology’, . See Karstens, ‘Bopp the Builder’ (this volume) for other influences of Cuvier on linguistic methodology.  Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, .   For example, Gabelentz interprets Latin numerals such as duodeviginti, undeviginti (, ; lit. ‘two/one from twenty’) and English time indications such as a quarter to ten o’clock as signals of general ‘hastiness’ (in the examples: for the next decade or hour) of the speakers of these languages. ‘We have always to be alert to the fact that what is so deeply embedded in the nature of races and peoples becomes manifest, also in the smallest details’, Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, .  Saussure explicitly refutes language-race connections (see note ) and language-mentality connections by presenting counterexamples. See Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, part , ch. . Reichling, Verzamelde studies, , in his zeal to present Gabelentz as a Saussure-avant-la-lettre, tries to downplay Gabelentz’s Humboldtian side by changing the term ‘philosophical’ in quotation (i) into ‘theoretical’, claiming that this is what Gabelentz actually meant.  The American anthropologist Franz Boas (- ) was a pioneer in this new approach to what is now called ‘linguistic relativism’. Boas’s work was continued by Edward Sapir (-) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (-). In a  lecture, Boas explicitly describes the change at issue: ‘At the time of Humboldt and Steinthal the evaluation of languages was one of the main objectives of research. Today, this problem does not interest us, but we are attracted to psychological problems’ (quoted in Els Elffers ‘The History of Thought about Language

Summarized by © lakhasly.com and Thought’, in: C. Cremers & M. den Dikken (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands  (Amsterdam etc.: Benjamins,  -), ). There was, however, a neo-Humboldtian trend in German linguistics in the first half of the twentieh century.  Sütterlin, ‘Review of “Die Sprachwissenschaft”’, .  Chris Hutton, ‘Introduction‘, in: Georg von der Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse (reprint, with a new introduction by Chris Hutton, London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, ), v-xvii.  Cf. Karstens, ‘Bopp the Builder’ (this volume).  For more examples of this ‘mixed’ style of research, see Peter H. Reill, ‘Science and the Construction of the Cultural Sciences in Late Enlightenment Germany: The Case of Wilhelm von Humboldt’, History and Theory , (), - and Irmline Veit-Brause, ‘Scientists and the Cultural Politics of Academic Disciplines in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany: Emil De Bois-Reymond and the Controversy over the Role of the Cultural Sciences’, History of the Human Sciences  (), -.  In my  article (see note ), I argue that it should also be taken into account that even in the natural sciences of those days the epistemological difference assumed between observation and generalization (allegedly guided by Mill’s inductive rules) and explanation (i.e. explanation by theoretical terms, often interpreted as ‘convenient fictions’) was much greater than in our days of omnipresent ‘theory-ladenness’.  Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, -.

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